


Guilt

by Zalphon



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21830716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zalphon/pseuds/Zalphon
Summary: A veteran of the Skyrim Civil War speaks about his experiences in the War.
Kudos: 2





	Guilt

**Guilt**

_By Radric Delvue, Veteran of the Skyrim Civil War_

When you’re signing up to join the Legion, they never tell you the truth about what you’re signing up to do. They told us we’d be heroes. That going up north and killing the treacherous Stormcloaks would make us men; it’d make us true sons of the Empire. They tell you whatever it takes to get you to sign your name on that dotted line, because they know once you do, you’ll do whatever it takes to avoid being a washout—a failure. There’s not a day that goes that I don’t wish I hadn’t signed my name or washed out, but I didn’t, and that’s why I sit here in taverns from dawn til dusk drinking to forget—if only just for a while. But some things you can’t forget. You want to. You want to forget more than anything, but some things just—stick. They stick the kind of way your first love does or the first time you hold the baby you made does, but those are the kinds of things you want to stick—the things I’m talking about—you don’t. Nobody does. They’re the kind of things that keep you up at night asking if there’s any possibility of atonement for the things you did and you try to tell yourself that it was war, you didn’t have a choice, it was you or them, but you know in your heart that things could’ve gone differently. Yeah, it was war, but that doesn’t mean you had to do the things you did. It doesn’t mean you had to get wrapped up in it. Doesn’t mean you had to be the monster you became. And that’s why you know there’s no penance heavy enough for your sins for nothing can absolve you of the horrible things you did because you told yourself it was us or them—we couldn’t all walk away from it so they had to die and we had to live. You wake up crying sometimes, thinking about how much you just want those people to forgive you, but you know they can’t, because dead men can’t forgive—they’re just gone—and it’s your fault. It’s all your fault. You killed them. You took your sword and you cut them down like animals, because you had your orders—you had things that had to happen or people would die—but you know those aren’t the ones you can’t forgive yourself for. It’s all the ones you killed because you were scared, because you were angry, because your best friend just died and you wanted revenge—you didn’t care if it’d bring your friend back or if that person was even involved, you were angry and you wanted to hurt somebody, so you did. You hurt them bad. You hurt them so much that they were left twitching in their own blood and you didn’t have the mercy in your heart to finish it—you left them there to die in agony when all it would’ve taken was one coup de grace to finish them off and free them of their unimaginable pain as they lay there trying to scream, but gargling on their own blood. He was just a boy. He was just a boy, not even old enough to have felt the embrace of a woman, and you—you—you did unspeakable things to him—you killed him, because he was there. Because you wanted to kill him. You wanted to kill them all because they killed your best friend who was really more like a brother at this point, so you did. You rampaged through their homes with your squad at your back ensuring nobody escaped your warpath—women, children, it didn’t matter—they were all just—animals. Just animals who killed your friend and his friends and their friends and their friends too. You had to kill them, right? You told yourself you had to. It was you or them. They were going to keep killing your friends and then you eventually, right? But you know, you got through it and when you looked back on that village and how the dirt had become a red-brown mud, you laughed because what else to do. You laughed because you couldn’t believe it. All of them—all of them were dead—because of you. You laughed so hard you cried and your brothers joined you in laughing at them, at all of those animals. You cried that night though, because no matter how much you scrubbed, you couldn’t wash that blood off your hands. You tried so hard. So, so hard. But it wouldn’t come off. It never comes off, but you know, as bad as that blood is, it pales in comparison to them pinning a medal on your chest and calling you a hero. You butchered the feeble, the sick, the young, and somehow, by some twisted leap of logic, you’re a damn hero. They said you single-handedly led an assault on a group of covert Stormcloak Operatives looking to further the terrorist regime of Ulfric Stormcloak—they even put it in the Black Horse Courier with you being paraded like a hero to all the forts as an example of “everything a legionary should be.” You know it’s a lie. The General knew it was a lie. But he told you to shut your damn mouth and just enjoy that he pulled your ass off the Block because he wasn’t going to let you piss on everything he’s done to make sure that the people down south keep believing this war is entirely justified and that we’re the big damn heroes coming in to save the oppressed people of Skyrim from a barbaric organization following a tyrannical madman. You wish he would’ve let them kill you. You deserve it. You know you deserve it, but nope, he denied you the one chance at making things as you right can by telling the whole damn world what a big hero you are for stopping these ‘operatives’ from you don’t know—poisoning a lake or something? You don’t pay attention to that shit, you just do what the General tells you to because it’s keeping you from the front lines, but you know what they don’t tell you about? They don’t tell you about what happens after the war is over—they don’t tell you how you come home and your family hugs you so tight and your mother cries at how her son is a big damn hero when you know the truth. When your father tells you for the first time how proud he is of you for saving all those people from those ‘Stormcloak bastards’ that you massacred like dogs. They don’t tell you that. They don’t tell you how every skirt looks at you like you’re hung like a horse and can make them scream louder than the Opera Singers of the Royal Opera House. They don’t tell you what it’s like for people think you’re something you’re not—for them to think you’re some great war hero when the truth is that you killed a bunch of people who did nothing wrong because you were upset—you were angry. They don’t tell you that no matter what you do, you can never go back to who you were before you signed up—you just have to live with it and the things you did. But you can’t. So you got some rope, you got a chair, and now you’re finally not going to hurt anymore—you’re not going to think all about those people anymore because soon, nothing will matter. You’ll be free. You’ll finally be free of that guilt that eats at you every day and has for the last six years. And you can’t help but laugh that same laugh you did all those years ago, but this time, you’re not crying because you’re sad—you’re crying because it’s going to be over. You’re finally going to be free. You’re never going to think about the War or Matthews or those people or anything again, because it’s all going to be over. It’s finally going to be over. 

It’s finally time for it to be over.


End file.
